A crisis in your business can pop up just about anywhere. For those entrepreneurs in the licensing business, such a problem can be magnified because you're dealing with someone else's brand as well as your own. Marty Brochstein, a former business journalist, offers advice on what to do to prevent a licensing crisis and, if that fails, what to do to limit the damage.

Face it. At some point—particularly if your company is successful—you’re going to have a business crisis that bleeds into the outside world.

It could be that one of your products is tangentially involved in a consumer accident. Or, you may have to go through a recall. One of your suppliers might be found to have unsafe factories, or to be employing child labor. Any or all of these things might be no fault of your own, but they have the potential to blow back on your brand and company.

Let’s assume that you’re doing everything you can to rectify the problem. But there’s more to it than that. How you deal with the situation publicly—how you communicate with the press and others—will go a long way toward determining whether you come out with damaged brand equity or praise for your corporate responsiveness.

For those in the licensing business, it’s a particularly fraught topic. Licensing is a marvelous tool that brand owners can use to extend and enhance their businesses by linking up with responsible licensees who are expert in their own categories. From the other end, a manufacturer or service provider can license a well-known brand, character or other trademark to give a product instant credibility or move into a new distribution channel. But a licensing deal can be compared to a marriage, and problems can crop up on one side.

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